SAINT PAUL, Minn. — Center Vincent Lecavalier scored an insurance goal in third period and the Philadelphia Flyers beat the Minnesota Wild 5-2 Tuesday night. Center Sean Couturier and right wingers Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds also scored for Philadelphia, which won three straight and five of seven. The Flyers are 6-1-3 in their past 10 games. Left winger Michael Raffi added an empty-net goal. Leading 3-2 in the third period, Philadelphia defenseman Pierre-Edouard Bellemare sent a pass to defenseman Andrew MacDonald near the left point. His wrist shot from there was deflected by Lecavalier past Minnesota goaltender Darcy Kuemper at 5:29. A healthy scratch for seven games...

Some things in the NHL playoffs are guarantees. Penguins star Sidney Crosby will again grow a pathetic mustache and make annoying whiny faces when he’s hit. His teammate, goalie Marc-Andre Fleury, will implode at some point and let up seven ...

It’s here, hockey fans, the greatest time of the year for puck heads: The NHL playoffs. Nothing is more exciting or less predictable, and if you want even more drama, start with the intrastate Pittsburgh Penguins-Philadelphia Flyers series. It’s going ...

Before we look forward to Round Two of the NHL playoffs, let’s reflect on what was a thrilling yet sometimes disturbing Round One. It had it all, didn’t it? Savage hits – including Nashville Captain Shea Weber slamming the head ...

Be prepared Flyers fans: This is going to be a painful Stanley Cup Final. On one side will be the New Jersey Devils, the Flyers’ biggest nemesis. A team that has ousted the Flyers so many times in the playoffs ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. Mike Yeo tried to guard against a letdown for two days. After getting into the West's top-8 for the first time in three months Sunday with a blowout of the Dallas Stars, the Wild coach warned his team not to drop its level of...

ST. PAUL, Minn. Six weeks ago, the way this stumbling, bumbling season was heading for the Wild, even the least cynical and most optimistic amongst us could never have imagined the Wild would be able to put itself back in the playoff picture. The...

EDMONTON, Alberta Jared Spurgeon and Marco Scandella are besties. They rarely do anything without the other, so it was fitting Friday night that one game after Spurgeon was lost two shifts into his night in Calgary, Scandella limped off the ice...

ST. PAUL, Minn. Ski-U-Mah! The Minnesota Gophers had a home game against Michigan on Saturday night, but more ex-Gophers scored at Xcel Energy Center than current Gophers at Mariucci Arena. Thomas Vanek scored two goals and Jordan Schroeder...

ST. PAUL, Minn. St. Paul and Sunrise, Fla., the homes of the Wild and Panthers, are 1,500 miles apart, but it's eerie how the teams were mirror images of each other heading into Thursday's meeting at Xcel Energy Center. Besides the fact that they...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." That's what the Winnipeg Jets had to be feeling with the Wild surging hard from the rear since the All-Star break. Tuesday night, the lethargic and undermanned Wild,...

We love symbols, because they do not require thought. Many Twins fans want to believe that Joe Mauer is the cause of his team's woes, instead of analyzing the most important components of every big-league team: the rotation and farm system. Many...

After the Wild had won its fifth consecutive game, Mike Yeo worried that his team might fall victim to overconfidence. Despite compiling its longest winning streak of the season, the coach reminded his players that they could ill afford to feel too...

Ryan Suter still remembers his uncle, Gary Suter, donning the red, white and blue in the inaugural World Cup of Hockey in 1996. The U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer and 1986 NHL Rookie of the Year played on a star-studded team full of American professionals such...

ST. PAUL, Minn. Too bad the Wild sits idle for the next three days because it has discovered its long lost October mojo. Coming off a three-game western Canadian sweep, there would be no first-game-after-a-long-road-trip blues Tuesday night as the...

The circumstances might have changed, but the message has not. Monday, as coach Mike Yeo discussed the Wild's three-game winning streak, he cautioned that his team can't live in the past the same thing he told his players when things weren't looking...

VANCOUVER The finish wasn't as simple as the Wild would have liked, but Devan Dubnyk and the Wild suddenly have something cooking. During a Super Bowl Sunday matinee, the Wild's recently acquired goaltender lifted the Wild to a rare three-game...

Once a small tournament considered a diversion during the Christmas and New Year's holidays, the World Junior Championship has become an obsession in hockey-obsessed Canada.
According to the National Post newspaper, nearly a half-million people tuned...

When did the NHL sell the rights to playoff games to C-SPAN?
Goodness, what a horrible-looking thing Game 3 of the Blackhawks-Wild series was Tuezzzzzzzday night. It was boring, and the Wild meant for it to be that way. It was their only chance.
The...

Long before they had heard of Sochi, well before they made it to the NHL, the five men who comprise the leadership group of the U.S. Olympic hockey team crossed paths many times on many rinks.
Fearless winger Dustin Brown grew up playing on B-level teams...